Spinning vs biking

Are you doing a Spinning style workout or not?
Lot's of standing, sprinting etc...

The calorie burn depends on the intensity of the workout though - not the style.

I use a HRM also and find with my Nordic track stationary bike if I subtract a third of their calories I'm close to the monitor. Same with my home treadmill. A gym treadmill is much better and more accurate- bikes probably are too.

LCD_80 wrote: »

Is all exercise equal? Does 10 minutes of steady state cardio with a heart rate of, say, 150bpm equal the same number of calories burned regardless of the activity?

Short answer.....no. There is not a linear relationship between heart rate and caloric expenditure. An unfit runner / cyclist will typically register a higher heart rate than a fit one of the same weight working at the same intensity while their caloric expenditure (all other things being equal) would be comparable.

OP it's not the type of bike, it's the workout itself that counts (time & intensity)

tymc3 wrote: »

I use an indoor exercise bike for my cardio exercise, when I log this into the my fitness app should I be logging it under spinning or bicycling because the calories burned vary between the two.

Depends on if we are doing an apples to apples comparison: Perceived effort the same? Heart Rate the same? Power (watts) the same? Duration the same? Intervals the same?

If outside riding, we end up pedaling less due to stops, downhills, crossing at intersections, etc. However, we have to balance, turn the bike, go up hills - and in general, we actually do work a bit harder when riding outside because of all of that.

Usually on a spin bike or exercise bike the pedal revolutions never stop, heart rate runs a bit higher due to not being cooled as adequately as when riding outside (even if you are using fans). Unless you really work to go hard and stay in certain power or heart rate zones while riding inside, you will probably burn less calories than when riding outside. It all depends on the cyclist's skill, knowledge of how hard they are going, what zones they target, use of intervals, duration, etc. I ground out 2 1/2 hours on the indoor exercise bike Sunday without stopping and although it "felt" like a big effort and I maintained my power and HR zones - I burned less calories than I would have doing the same ride outside (based on similar rides' data I have collected the past couple of years). My difference was about 200 calories - mostly due to hills, wind, starts and stops at intersections, resistance all combined together for an outside ride.

Example - I can ride a spin bike for an hour where I burn about 300-400 calories. I can also ride it for an hour and burn twice that much depending on my intensity. Ditto for the bike outside. My indoor bike has a power meter/heart rate/cadence/distance and records all of the data which is uploaded to Training Peaks - so I rely on that to record my burn. I use similar measurement tools on my road bike outside (power, cadence, distance, speed, heart rate) which gets uploaded to Training Peaks.